ACFE Insights

As I sat in the taxi in Jackson, Mississippi, waiting for the cab driver to “call in” my credit card because he had no credit card machine or app on his flip phone, I cringed. Just four days prior, I was teaching an ACFE webinar on travel fraud and here I was, hamstrung by an antiquated process that put my credit card at risk.

While a report prepared by the Risk and Infrastructure Science Center indicates that severe weather — like Hurricanes Harvey and Maria — lead the pack when it comes to causes of power outages in the U.S., Mother Nature is not without rivals. Power grids can go down for a number of reasons beyond natural disasters. They often use aging equipment, are prone to human error and can just malfunction. However, energy hackers are starting to play more of a role in blackouts.

Perhaps the most encouraging and notable piece of RSA’s most recent quarterly report comes in the form of an overall decrease in cyberfraud. The total amount of cyberfraud attacks observed from January 1, 2018 to March 31, 2018, represented a decrease not only from the previous quarter (16.2%) but also from the same quarter of 2017 (8.6%).

In less than a month’s time, the biggest global extravaganza will kick off in Russia. Thirty-two national teams will fight for the top spot in the 2018 Football World Cup. FIFA estimates that more than $5.7 billion in revenue will be generated from the showpiece event, and that more than a million tourists are expected to travel to Russia. This event will indeed be a good time for more than 3.2 billion fans worldwide, but it will also be a potentially lucrative time for fraudsters.